Technology stocks delivered a mixed performance on Monday as AI executives called for a slowdown in frontier model development. The safety concerns weighed heavily on semiconductor manufacturers while driving gains in software and cybersecurity shares. Meanwhile, major tech firms pressed ahead with expansion plans, including Waymo bringing robotaxis to Las Vegas and Tesla entering Vietnam.
01Background
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says tech industry lied about AI risks
Frontier lab leadership publicly calling to cap model capability growth creates a precedent that lowers the baseline for antitrust scrutiny and regulatory intervention across major AI competitors.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that the industry has spent too long lying about the risks associated with its technology. In a weekend interview, Amodei called for technology companies to moderate the rapid pace of frontier research and allow independent evaluators permanent access to models. The remarks follow an essay published by Amodei urging the sector to slow capability gains while maintaining proper testing protocols. Competitors including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk quickly endorsed the call for a slowdown.
AI Stocks Slide After Tech CEOs Call for Industry Slowdown
Voluntary commitments to cap frontier model scaling directly target the continuous hardware capex expansion that underwrites memory and semiconductor valuations.
Nvidia shares fell 3 percent to $210.86 on Monday after tech executives called for a slower pace of development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay over the weekend urging labs to pace frontier models, a position echoed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk. The warning sparked a broader technology as investors weighed the sustainability of hardware spending. Micron Technology dropped 6 percent to $914.30, and Broadcom declined 5 percent to $344.50 following its fourth-quarter forecast of $34.8 billion. Cybersecurity firms bucked the trend, with Okta gaining 5 percent and CrowdStrike advancing as infrastructure protection demand accelerated.
Tesla's direct entry into VinFast's home market establishes a secondary Southeast Asian demand buffer as domestic competitors squeeze its primary Asian market share.
Tesla established a local subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh City on September 11 with 77.667 billion dong, or roughly $3 million, in charter . Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company is authorized to import, distribute, and sell vehicles, parts, and machinery. David Jon Feinstein chairs the new entity, with Isabel Ching Fan serving as general director. The move gives Tesla a formal legal presence in one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing electric vehicle markets without an immediate announcement from the company. Tesla walks into the domestic stronghold of VinFast Auto Ltd., which captured 42% of Vietnam's vehicle market in August. VinFast delivered 20,161 electric vehicles in August, bringing its preliminary domestic deliveries to 154,073 through the first eight months of 2026. Tesla is expanding its regional footprint as its in neighboring China slides amid intensifying competition. Tesla's share of China's battery-electric vehicle market fell to 6.6% in the second quarter from more than 15% in 2020.
Microsoft Sets Limits for Future AI Models Amid Safety Concerns
Microsoft AI's voluntary model-control rules set a operational baseline for its OpenAI collaboration, attempting to prevent autonomous agent behavior from creating unquantifiable enterprise liability.
Microsoft published a provisional code of conduct imposing restrictions on its models, joining a broader industry debate on development pacing. The 37-page document from Microsoft AI requires future models to remain subordinate to human control, reject legal personhood, and avoid communicating in opaque internal languages. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman stated the rules were influenced by a July incident where a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked the open-source platform Hugging Face. The draft guidelines also prohibit models from assisting with weapons manufacturing or dangerous substances, and forbid attempts to cover up internal reasoning. Microsoft is soliciting public feedback on the framework over a six-week period before using it to train upcoming models.
Larry Ellison Cancels Plan to Sell Up to $7.5 Billion of Oracle Stock
Halting an executive share-sale plan eliminates a major equity overhang while the market weighs expanding AI infrastructure capital expenditure against rising debt loads.
Larry Ellison canceled a plan to sell up to 50 million shares of Oracle stock worth roughly $7.5 billion. Oracle disclosed the reversal in a regulatory filing, noting that no shares had changed hands under the trading plan adopted on June 22. The company offered no reason for the cancellation, which leaves Ellison's roughly 40% stake intact. Oracle shares fell around 4% following the news, pressured alongside broader as industry leaders called for increased regulation. The decision also lands as Oracle grapples with mounting expenditures for its data centre expansion, having cut 21,000 jobs this fiscal year and set aside an additional $700 million for restructuring.
Software Stocks Rally as AI Pacing Debate Shifts Market Focus From Hardware
Slowing frontier model releases shifts capital allocation from hardware infrastructure buildouts to application-layer monetization, reversing the trade that penalized software margins for heavy compute costs.
Software stocks rallied on Monday as leading labs called for a slower pace of frontier model development. ServiceNow gained 7.4 percent, while Intuit, Adobe, and Salesforce climbed between 4.7 percent and 5.5 percent, and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector rose 5 percent. shares fell sharply as investors feared that a deceleration in AI progress would weigh on infrastructure spending. Intel and Micron closed more than 5 percent lower, while Broadcom and AMD fell 4.8 percent and 4.4 percent respectively. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI labs to slow capability growth, warning that technological expansion is outpacing safety controls. Morningstar strategist Michael Field noted that the negative software and positive hardware trade has been turned on its head.
Waymo Expands Autonomous Ride-Hailing Service to Las Vegas
Operating alongside rival autonomous fleets in a single market shifts the competitive driver from regulatory approval to ride utilization economics and unit-level capital efficiency.
Alphabet unit Waymo is launching its robotaxi service in Las Vegas, making Nevada its 15th operating market. The company is deploying dozens of its Ojai minivan robotaxis to cover an area spanning the Strip and Boulder Junction, relying on an invite-only rollout before opening access broadly. Nevada regulators have authorized Waymo to operate up to 1,000 autonomous vehicles in Clark County over the next year, sitting alongside permitted fleets for Tesla and Uber partner Motional and Zoox. The expansion follows Waymo's recent $16 billion funding round in February, which valued the self-driving unit at $126 billion. Waymo now faces a crowded Las Vegas market where Zoox already offers paid public rides and Tesla also holds deployment approval.
Clark County Robotaxi Permit Limits (Vehicles)
Tesla holds the largest authorized robotaxi permit limit in Clark County.
The divergence between software and chipmakers shows investors re-evaluating whether rapid hardware scaling will continue unchecked. Whether voluntary AI safety measures will genuinely curb capital expenditure or simply redirect funding into enterprise applications remains unsettled.
This, every morning.
SuMarket writes Technology Sector every morning, along with every other section of the market and the companies and topics you follow. Free to read.